


The Fish Who Fell in Love with the Sun

by Aurae



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alien Mythology/Religion, Chocolate Box Exchange 2019, Creepy Fluff, Exchange Assignment, M/M, Major Character Injury, Naboo Culture, POV First Person, Possessive Behavior, Story within a Story, Storytelling, Unreliable Narrator, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-06 23:19:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17354543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aurae/pseuds/Aurae
Summary: After the Battle of Yavin, Vader returns to the Imperial Palace on Coruscant, contemplating his next move against the mysterious pilot who destroyed the Death Star.But Palpatine seems to prefer reminiscing about old stories from his childhood…





	The Fish Who Fell in Love with the Sun

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Wolf_of_Lilacs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolf_of_Lilacs/gifts).



This is a setback, I will admit, one exacerbated in equal measure by Krennic’s presumptive arrogance and Tarkin’s unimaginative overconfidence. They were fools. I am glad to be rid of them.

The loss of the Death Star before the full realization of its potential is not the death blow to my Empire this upstart band of rebel traitors believes—or hopes—that it is. In final analysis, the setback is minor. Contingency plans and countermeasures are already being put into motion, and when I do strike back, it will be with overwhelming force. Their destruction is imminent, a foregone conclusion. I need only be patient and await the opportune moment.

Moreover, they did not succeed in taking my apprentice from me. I could sense his impotent rage, his fury at this humiliating defeat, even separated as we were by lightyears and the vacuum of space, and thus was I assured of Vader’s continued survival. _His_ loss would have represented a far, far greater setback than any I have yet experienced during my reign.

There are only two Dark Lords of the Sith. It would be unconscionable to lose him now—now, when I am so close to achieving absolute victory. And it would be unconscionable to lose him…ever.

I do not declare my arrival at his door; I simply enter. I am unaccompanied, unscheduled, and unannounced. His private quarters in the Imperial palace are as accessible to me as the secret corners of his psyche, after all, and he knows it.

He was adrift in space for days after the battle, almost an entire standard week, and this extended period of privation has clearly taken its toll on him. It was, I suspect, a nearer thing than he’d care to admit. He has been laid out on an operating table, a temporary respirator strapped over his nose and mouth, his armor and life-support suit removed for servicing. A half-dozen specialist droids buzz and whirr about him, some making repairs and fine adjustments to his prosthetic limbs, others working through a long checklist of diagnostic and prophylactic medical procedures.

Even naked like this, though, he still wears his fearsome suit of scars. The scars are a different kind of armor, every last remnant of the sensuous vulnerability of his youth burnt long ago to ash. Then, he had been sweet, almost bashful in my embrace, whimpering and writhing against me as he was buffeted by wave after wave of transcendent ecstasy. Now, he is utterly without shame. He is fierce, unyielding. Impenetrable. When he turns his head to the side to look at me, his eyes blaze like the twin hearts of two yellow suns at my approach.

I summon a seat and sit down beside him. I rest the palm of my hand on the top of his head. There is no hair there anymore; those honeyed curls have also been burnt away forever. Gently, I caress his flesh.

An old memory stirs.

“There was this pilot, my Master, strong in the Force,” Vader begins without preamble. Without the vocoder in his mask, he is hoarse, soft-spoken. He sounds younger, more Human. “He was unfamiliar to me; I was given no presentiment. I must—”

He wants to discuss the defeat at Yavin IV, of course. The urge to do so is only natural. At this particular moment, however, I find that I am not interested in hearing his excuses. We will have plenty of time for that later. I remove my hand from his head and place it instead over his prosthetic hand, fingers of bone and of durasteel interlaced.

“We sat together like this once before,” I say, interrupting what would have surely become a tirade. “Tell me: Do you remember?”

His eyes narrow. He is wary. He does not reply to my question, but he does not need to: I already know the answer.

“When I found you lying there on the black sands of Mustafar, only your incandescent rage, your hatred, your lust for vengeance, kept you clinging to life. Another man would have left you to die. Another man _had_ left you to die. But I was not such a man. I lifted you up and took you home.”

Vader is silent. He turns his head away from me and gazes up at the advanced tech hanging directly above him. All for him. Further above, the curved ceiling is dark and blank.

“The Clones had basic combat medic training, but they did not have the expertise to treat injuries as grievous as yours. They’d seen the like before on the battlefield, though, and believed your life to be all but lost already. Do you know what Commander Thire said to me? ‘Let him go, Your Majesty. He shouldn’t have to suffer needlessly.’ But you were my prize. The last thing I was going to do was let you go.

“They gave you a blood transfusion. You went into shock, and they pumped you full of drugs. You became hypothermic, too cold and weak even to shiver. I’d not known a burnt man could die of the cold. Perhaps I should have. Death, finality, nothingness, these are always cold, Lord Vader. Alas, I digress. Where was I? Oh, yes. When they laid a blanket over you, I thought the rough fabric against your flesh would make you scream in agony, but you’d lost your sense of touch to the fire. And you were starting to lose consciousness. ‘He must stay awake,’ Thire said. ‘If he falls asleep, he’ll never wake up again.’

“I called your name. A flicker…yes, you could hear me. Encouraged, I took your hand—the prosthetic, the only one of your limbs Kenobi had left you—into both of mine. Ah, there, another flicker…you could feel my touch. Machine had endured where flesh did not. Your fingers curled around mine.”

I feel him react to the name “Kenobi.” The old anger at his betrayal has been supplanted—confusion? Disappointment? The savor of revenge is addictive but fleeting. He will require a new high, a new goal to drive him. We shall discuss this soon.

Soon…but not yet. I continue with my reminisces. “Thire took note of your reaction. Your reputation as one of my closest confidantes had become common knowledge amongst the troops, it seemed. ‘That’s good. Talk to him. Anything. Just keep him focused on your voice,’ Thire suggested.

“I could have struck him down for his audacity. Did _he_ dare command _me_? His recommendations were sound, however, and his use to me had not yet ended, so I did not. Nevertheless, our lack of privacy placed certain limitations on what could be said. Certain secrets shared between us still had to be kept. Do you remember what I ultimately decided? Do you remember the story I told you?”

He does. I can tell. The new tension in his spine, the subtle vibration in the ebb and flow of the Force like the air around a plucked lyraharp string—they give him away.

The folklorists of Theed University trace the oral history of our Nubian oldtales back to first contact between early Human colonists to Naboo and the native Gungans. The oldtales’ resemblance to the Gungans’ sacred verse is, to the modern eye, unmistakable. And, given the millennia of competition and conflict between the two species, it should come as no surprise that the Naboo took what had been holy and downgraded it to frivolity, to bedtime stories for children.

Moreover, it should come as no surprise that my ancient ancestors also erased all of the Gungan characters themselves from these stories and replaced them with mythic archetypes. Cultural genocide, the folklorists would say. But to a child, whether the protagonist is a Gungan or a talking fish makes no difference whatsoever.

I am the foremost of Naboo’s native sons; naturally, I can recite our oldtales from memory. Nineteen years ago, I shared one of them with my injured apprentice.

We remember it together.

***

It was a time before time, and the Sun did not rise in the east and set in the west, as it does now, arising from the ocean, crossing the dome of the sky, and falling back into the ocean again. Instead, in this time before time, the Sun rose in the north and set in the south, from land to sky to land. There was a reason for this, and it was because the Sun was not free. No, no, alas, the Sun was had been seduced and deceived, you see, made prisoner and enslaved, forced to serve eternally by a cruel and unyielding Earth.

This, though, is not the oldtale of the Earth Who Enslaved the Sun. We’ll save that one for another time, shan’t we, Lord Vader? Rather, this is the oldtale of the Fish Who Fell in Love with the Sun.

It has always been one of my favorites. Now then, where was I? Ah, yes—

There were many fish in the sea in this time before time, and they were, with one exception, frivolous creatures, free of worldly cares. They never took it upon themselves to look above the surface of the ocean waters, and although they benefited from his life-giving light, they never looked up towards at the Sun and never, ever made his troubles their own…

…save for one, lonely Fish. She did not appear exceptional; you would not have been able to pick her out from a school of her fellow fish. But she, and she alone, dared to rise to the surface. She, and she alone, dared to turn her eyes toward the celestial light of the Sun.

And what, pray tell, do you suppose she saw? No, no, she was not struck blind, although some who look ill-advisedly at the Sun have been blinded. She was a brave fish, and because she was brave, the Fish saw the Sun clearly—his radiance, his magnificence, his unsullied, exquisite _beauty_ —and she fell in love. Deeply, irretrievably. That, as you may well imagine, was inevitable.

Alas, such love could not be reciprocated, never mind _consummated_. The Sun, you see, traversed the sky each day and reposed with his Mistress, the Earth, each night. He never, ever went near the ocean. In fact, the ocean was forbidden to him. The Fish, of course, had neither legs to walk nor wings to fly, and she could abide neither air nor solid ground.

The Fish despaired. She sought the council of her fellow fish friends, but they cared nothing for the Sun. She wept salt tears, but what are a few more tears added to the vastness of the ocean? She cried out to the Sun every day when he passed directly overhead—You are beautiful! I love you! See me! I beseech you!—until her voice was spent, but he was much, much too far away to hear even the loudest cries of one small fish.

Thus it was. Time ticked by. Days? Months? Years? Decades? Centuries? Millenia? This was a time before time—who knows? The Fish’s fellow fish friends, disturbed by her singular fixation, shunned her company, so she swam alone. And yet, the Fish refused to forsake her love for the Sun.

Then, one day, a day seemingly like any other, at midday, the Fish broke through the surface of the water, turned her fish lips towards the heavens above, shouted her love to the Sun…and for the first time, the very first time, she heard a voice, or _voices_ , answer.

Those voices which answered belonged to the North and South Winds. The two brother winds plied the skies, and they were everywhere. They knew of the Fish Who Fell in Love with the Sun because they had heard her, and crucially, they knew why the Sun could never respond. With words like ripples across the surface of the water, they told the Fish the Sun’s sad story: The Sun was slave to the Earth.

The Fish did not hesitate; she vowed right then and there that she would free her beloved from the Earth’s bondage. However long it might take, whatever it might cost her—none of that mattered. Somehow, someday, she would make the Sun her own. Either that, she vowed, or she would die in the attempt.

The North and South Winds were so impressed by her conviction that they gave her a gift: They gave the Fish wings with which to fly. Then, they explained to her what she must do.

The next day, with her new wings, the Fish chased the Sun across the dome of the sky. He was fast, and she could hardly keep up, but—buoyed by the strong breath of the South Wind—keep up she did, and when the Sun set, she saw exactly where he made his descent back into the Earth, and—buoyed by the strong breath of the North Wind—she followed him down.

She followed him down, down, down, into the bowels of the Earth, gliding on her Winds-given wings and buoyed by the Winds’ breath over a landscape of jagged, razor sharp crags and a roaring river of glowing orange magma and a monstrous, three-headed beast guarding the entrance to the Earth’s palace, all the way to the throne room of the fearsome Mother Earth herself.

Though nearly overcome by the splendors of the Earth’s mein, the Fish gathered her courage and made her case before the towering throne. She did not demean herself, but she was respectful. She told the Earth of her unyielding love for the Sun; she pleaded for his freedom; and the Earth, whose heart was harder than diamond, was nonetheless moved by the power of the little Fish’s passions.

`He can be yours,` the Earth told the Fish, `if you succeed in returning to the ocean with your life. If, however, you die whilst in my domain, I will never let the Sun go free, and he will remain mine, and only mine, for eternity. Fish, do you agree to my terms?`

The fish agreed to the Earth’s terms with gratitude and set forth from the palace immediately to begin her journey home.

This return journey would not, alas, be easy, for the Fish no longer had the breath of the North and South Winds to buoy and lift her high above the many obstacles she’d previously passed with ease. She would need to rely on her wits and her willpower if she was to succeed in liberating the Sun from the Earth.

The first obstacle she faced was the monstrous, three-headed beast guarding the entrance to the Earth’s palace. The beast had not permitted the Fish entry, but she had nonetheless entered, and now it sought to correct this error with her death. `Song will sooth the savage beast,` the North and South Winds had told the Fish. And so, she sang, and she sang, and she sang, and one terrible eye after another after another after another slowly dropped closed. She sang until she lost her voice entirely, but by the time that had happened, all six eyes of the beast’s three heads had shut, and the beast was fast asleep. It did not awaken as she passed safely out of the Earth’s palace.

The second obstacle she faced the roaring river of orange magma. `Do not linger in the hot places beneath the land, or you will fall,` the North and South Winds had told the Fish. And so, she flew as fast as she could over that wide, raging river, heart pounding, gills heaving, and though the sparks singed her scales off of her flesh and the noxious gases seared her eyes and blinded her, she did not tarry. Even as her wings began to burn to ash, she did not stop flying, so that by the time her Wind-given wings had disintegrated entirely, she’d crossed safely over the river of magma.

The third and final obstacle she faced was the landscape of jagged, razor-sharp crags. How would she possibly traverse it? The North and South Winds had given her no advice in this matter. Already, she was mute, and blind, and wingless. She was, lest we forget, a fish out of water. But she was also the Fish Who Fell in Love with the Sun, and she would not give up; she would never surrender! And so she flopped, and she crawled, and the jagged, razor-sharp crags sliced her fragile fish-skin to ribbons, but she would not stop. The jagged, razor-sharp crags tore her muscles, her tendons, and ligaments, but she would not stop. The jagged, razor-sharp crags broke her delicate fish-bones, but she did not stop…and with the last—the very, very last!—of her strength she flopped onto the sand mere meters from the ocean’s edge, utterly spent.

She lay there on the sand, despairing, certain of her death and, worse still, certain of her failure. But then—then, then! The tide turned and began to rise. At high tide, she was borne back into the ocean, returned to blessed waters of her birth at last, where all of her injuries to her body, her broken fish-bones, her torn muscles, her burnt scales, were healed.

And at last, at long, long last, the Sun was hers! The Sun kissed the Fish’s eyes as he rose, a sign of his gratitude, and she could see again. The Sun embraced the Fish, a sign of his love for her, and the pleasure of it made the Fish laugh with joy, her voice restored to her.

Thereafter, the Fish and the Sun were never again parted. During the day, yes, he crosses the dome of sky to share his life-giving light with the whole world. But when night falls, he always returns to the ocean, to rejoin the Fish who loved him so much that she challenged the Mother Earth itself to have him.

Well, and there you have it, Lord Vader—that is why the Sun rises in the east and sets in the west.

***

Back then, he could only listen. Now, nineteen years later, he questions.

“What was so special about the Sun? And what did he ever do for the Fish? The Fish was a fool,” Vader scoffs, “and she suffered needlessly.”

“No one said anything about ‘need.’ The Fish fell in love with the Sun, and she wanted him for her own. Wanting him is reason enough,” I reply.

“Hmm.” He is not satisfied by my explanation.

“Wanting him is reason enough, my old friend,” I repeat softly. My hand grips his more tightly. “To want something, to claim it, to possess it, _and then to hold onto him when fate would steal him from me_ —”

If he notices my little slip, he does not acknowledge it. Yes, I could have let him die on Mustafar; yes, I could have let him die on the short shuttle journey back to Coruscant. His failure was written clear across his skin. But he did not die, and the reason he did not die was because I willed it so. Instead, he rose again, reborn man and machine, more beautiful, more powerful, _perfect_ , because I willed it so.

And I will it still.

“You have confronted Kenobi once more. I felt him die. You have had your revenge. That was a great personal triumph for you. The circle is complete,” I say.

“Yes, my Master. At last, Kenobi has paid the ultimate price.”

I sense the dissatisfaction which lies behind his proud words. The high of the kill is fleeting, indeed. He must needs focus his energies elsewhere.

“Finding and dispatching that nettlesome pilot should be no challenge.”

There. He is delivered a new objective upon which he may obsess. My words are promise and peril and pragmatism, all at once. I know he understands me. Absolute victory is within our grasp.

“It will be done, my Master.”

 

END

**Author's Note:**

> (1) Posted to the exchange on February 6, 2019.
> 
> (2) This story is self-contained but exists notionally in the same fanfictional universe as “[Tests of Loyalty](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7658809),” “[A Seduction](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7604662),” and “[That Sleep of Death, What Dreams May Come](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7731400).” Your basic understanding and enjoyment (or lack thereof) of any of these stories shouldn’t be affected by not having read any of the others. For convenience, I have created an AO3 collection for all of these loosely interconnected stories [here](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/Star_Wars_Undiscovered_Countries).


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